Group items tagged

This article discusses the environmental and human health costs of power plants. These type of costs would be considered negative externalities of production, because they are harmful effects that do not effect the firm producing the power, but rather a third party, society as a whole. When producers are making the power, they value the cost as the private costs to their firms, but as outlined by this article, there are many social costs which they do not consider, and this leads to over-production, which means the market is failing, as the resources are not being allocated efficiently. An interesting aspect is that they are able to put a true "cost" on environmental and health effects, which can be quite hard to determine.

On Wednesday, White House officials summoned dozens of leaders of nonprofit organizations that strongly back the health law to help them coordinate plans for a prayer vigil, press conferences and other events outside the court when justices hear arguments for three days beginning March 26. This article shows concern over the American Health care system which is *none profitable*. "For months, Democrats in Congress and progressive groups have urged the White House to make a more forceful defense of the health care law, which is denounced almost daily by Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates."

Minimum price controls should be imposed on alcohol and tougher drink-driving laws introduced, policy options circulated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) suggest. Details in the global consultation process have emerged as the government is resisting demands from health professionals for alcohol to become more expensive.

This piece by The Globe and Mail outlines Canada's ongoing shortage of healthcare professionals, particularly family doctors. Although it doesn't address economics directly, this article applies to our topic because doctors are considered a 'service', and thus not having enough of them is a scarcity within Canada's economy. The author talks about how difficult it is to find a regular family doctor in her area. According to her, there are actual business dedicated to helping people locate doctors. At the end of the article, statistics reveal that this is a normal problem occuring in a large part of Canadians. There is actually also a major shortage of healthcare professionals in developing areas such as Africa, where there aren't even suitable medical locations in the case of an emergency. **By the way: I apologize for my lack of tags other than 'scarcity'... I accidentally posted the article before tagging anything else! **I fixed the tags... finally figured out how, woohoo!!

This is a great example of scarcity, and even opportunity cost. These doctors are somewhat of a luxury, and although they are a need, the scarcity makes them a reasonable want as well. Scarcity may have largely negative repercussions, yet there is an occasional positive outcome for some unit in an economy. It's certainly beneficial to the other businesses (helping to locate doctors) that have evolved from this problem, and those companies are profiting from a Nation's scarcity.

This article discusses a new study that shows rising levels of equality do not necessarily result in lower crime, or health. On the contrary, it shows that higher inequality is associated with higher growth. However, the author argues that extreme levels of poverty should be combatted, and that economic policy should be used to promote "human exceptionalism."

This article outlines the consistent debate over nutrition, especially in schools. The beneficial externalities are obvious in an increase in health for the student, as well as the encouraged development of healthy eating. However, if junk-foods are so much easier to obtain and the number of un-educated consumers in terms of nutrition are so low, the public will be more inclined to just keep eating in their old habits. How on earth can the government effectively change this situation for the betterment of society?

This article describes the vast amounts of subsidies that are available to companies providing renewable energy sources in the United States. The government decided to provide subsidies for these projects because it felt that they were necessary for the environmental health of the country, however some people believe that the government provided too much unnecessary money in this situation.

This article discusses the current "Occupy" protests which are taking place worldwide, and how the effect which they are having. The protesters are pushing to government to expand the budget of the government so that more goods can become public goods, like health care, for example. The article also discusses how protesters stood outside malls pleading for consumers not to purchase goods however if that were to happen, the economy would obviously sink back into recession.

Hello, In this article it talks about how the Venezuelan government are trying to control inflation by setting fixed prices. The government's policy of price control demonstrate faith that one day they might succeed and lower their inflation rate which is at 27 per cent, the same as last year. The government are imposing a new law which the price controls will affect five general areas; personal and domestic hygiene products, car parts, medicines and health services and food. The government tries to prevent companies from "hoarding and speculation" and "exploiting the people". Also, the prices for 18 products are being frozen, and companies like Heinz, Pepsi, Coca Cola, and Nestle need 'special' attention. People say that the fear the private companies how will lead to more shortages and more inflation. From Tim

This demonstrates scarcity by showing that a shortage of drugs, caused by manufacturing problems, is causing high markups from secondary suppliers. 

I recently heard about a similar issue in Canada and I assume the same problem is occurring elsewhere... Drug companies have decided to switch their focus to more expensive drugs, such as cancer treatment drugs, because they can make so much more money on them. At the same time, they are reducing production of the cheaper drugs because of the low profit margin, even though these drugs may be essential in saving people's lives. The scarcity of the drugs for the people who need them could be easily fixed, but is being prevented due to the greed of large corporations.

It's really unfortunate how so many individual events, such as stolen goods or contaminated drugs, have lead to so much suffering. The market is the big, but (as the article says) there are only about a half-dozen companies that produce these drugs, and so when there is one little problem, it quickly becomes something much bigger. It isn't just one reason, this article otulines several, all of which are wreaking havoc on patients and the healthcare system as a whole. Clearly, pharmacists are scrambling to provide for their patients. Hopefully, this shortage doesn't lead to illegal imports or other bad things that can occur when people are desperate.

This particular article relates soda to alcohol and cigarettes whereby consumption of these goods are bad for health but even after numerous ways to decrease consumption, the determinant having the biggest impact on consumption was proven to be the price of sodas.

Today, we are one of 7 billion people on Earth. This historic milestone is rekindling age-old debates over birth control, protecting natural resources and reducing consumption. It also has many wondering whether the Earth can support so many people. About half were added just in the past 40 years, and 3 billion more are expected by 2100.

According to Carl Haub, "Currently, world population is growing at the most rapid pace in history." And today, growth is highest in poorest countries where health care advances are keeping people alive longer while birth rates are still relatively high. Therefore in the future, there will be more shortages in food and the price of everything will be going up. There will not be a equilibrium of the economy after all.